Exploding Potatoes
London – There was more than ketchup in the fries. Workers at a french fries factory in northern England had to be evacuated twice last week because of bombs in the spuds. McCain Foods says suspected munitions from the two World Wars turned up in batches of European potatoes that were to be processed into frozen french fries. First an artillery shell tip was found. A day later a suspected hand grenade was spotted in the taters. Members of a bomb squad evacuated a hundred-yard exclusion zone and detonated the antique armaments.
Send in the replacements
Russian president Vladimir Putin apparently surprised diplomatic observers in Britain when he declined to expel four U.K. diplomats who had been accused of espionage. Reasoned Putin, according to a dispatch in Britain’s Guardian, these four weren’t smart enough to avoid getting caught, and if he expelled them, the U.K. would just send replacements who are more clever.
Malpractice
Kyoto, Japan, a 32-year-old nurse was sentenced to more than three years in prison after she was convicted of relieving her overwork-induced stress by tearing off the fingernails and toenails of immobilized patients.
British dentist Mojgan Azari was de-licensed after a conviction for allowing her unqualified boyfriend to do fillings on more than 600 patients.